Lena Dunham covers Marie Claire UK

Lena Dunham is on the cover of Marie Claire UK. I have zero expertise in magazine covers, like I don’t know what makes one sell or not, but this doesn’t appeal to me at all. It’s awkward, right?

Still, I think it’s cool that she’s on the cover, and the angle they’re taking is, if not exactly new (AT ALL) , still nice to hear from her. She is unrelentingly millennial when she talks about her parents, though:

“'My parents both have really healthy attitudes about their own bodies but… they also just always made me feel pretty and cool and smart, even in the moments when I have known – and still know – that my body wasn’t fitting into a traditional Hollywood idea of the female body”

Man, this girl’s relationship to Mom and Dad. I kind of can’t get over it. She likes them a whole lot.

Anyway. While I can totally get behind the idea that we want to celebrate her body which is unusual in the glamourous fashion sphere, they take great pains to make her look like she ‘fits’, don’t they? One of the things Lena herself has done well is to be unapologetic about the way she and Hannah Horvath look onscreen. This is not that, of course – Lena looks very much like she’s either trying to be or has been instructed to be ‘sultry’, ‘open-mouthed’ and ‘sexy’, and in most of the pictures I don’t buy it.

Still, this is getting closer. She looks like who I imagine her to be full-time in two of the pictures: the flowered dress one and the best one of all, where her tattoo is visible and she’s wrapped in the white fuzz. These are the Lena Dunham pics I want to see, and you know I’m not a fangirl who slavers over everything she does.

Maybe I’m in the minority – and it’s not like these pics are giantly offensive or anything. But if we’re going to show off someone different in a fashion magazine, having her look A) comfortable and B) like herself is a major first step.

The Marie Claire issue is on stands now. Click here to see more photos.

Also attached – Lena and Adam Driver on the set of Girls. See, look at that plaid skirt she’s wearing? That’s what I want to see! That’s what she actually wears, and it’s cute!